Matinée de Septembre (English: September Morn) is a controversial oil painting on canvas completed in 1911 by the French artist Paul Émile Chabas.

September Morn depicts, from an oblique point of view, a naked blonde girl or young woman standing ankle-deep in the water near the shoreline of a tranquil lake surrounded by hills.

[3][8] The art critic François Thiébault-Sisson described this as evoking the morning, the young subject preparing to bathe while "light grey vapours are still floating over the lake".

[15][16] In subsequent years Chabas spent the winters working in Paris, while he passed his summers painting young women along the shores of rivers, lakes, and seas.

[c][21] The art historian Bram Dijkstra has argued otherwise, stating that "no artist was more assiduous in exploiting the prurient possibilities of the woman-child" than Chabas, whom he considers to have "emphasized analogies of nude little girls and the familiar poses of vanity or physical arousal given to adult women".

[23] Female models had become more common than male ones beginning in the early 19th century, first serving allegorical roles or as muses, but eventually becoming individuals "who could be classified and whose history could be written".

The head was based on a sketch of a young American, Julie Phillips, which Chabas had completed upon observing her and her mother dining in Paris; finding her profile to his liking, he silently drew her, then introduced himself and "apologized for his presumption".

[43] In her memoirs, Vogue editor Edna Woolman Chase recounted how Ortiz had arranged for numerous reproductions to be made and sent to New York, and that – although he had been interested in acquiring the original – he had been unable to do so.

[45][57] Other witnesses for the prosecution included censors, educators, and clergy, such as the superintendent Ella Flagg Young and the head of the Juvenile Protective Association Gertrude Howe Britton.

[55][57][58] Jackson, acting as his own lawyer, highlighted the hypocrisy of censoring the painting while a nude statue of Diana stood in front of the Montgomery Ward Building.

Anthony Comstock, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and nationally recognized for his campaigns against "smut",[o] saw September Morn – sources differ as to whether it was the original or a print[p]  – on display in the window of Braun and Company, an art dealership on West 46th Street.

[63] In a letter to the editor of The New York Times, he accused Comstock of causing the controversy to earn greater publicity for himself, and stated that he wearied of crowds outside his shop, who blocked paying customers from entering it.

[67] The controversy promoted polemics regarding September Morn and censorship,[7] and multiple editorial cartoons; one depicted a young woman bathing, only her head showing, with a caption attributed to Comstock reading "Don't you suppose I can imagine what is UNDER the water?".

The suffragist Inez Milholland defended September Morn, stating that it was "exquisite and delicate, depicting perfect youth and innocence", and found it "funny, if it weren't so sad" that such a work would be censored while more titillating film posters were left untouched.

[71][72] Reichenbach's claim that his actions "brought the picture into the newspapers and into fame" has been questioned, particularly given that the Chicago court case had happened months earlier, and contemporary news accounts do not mention him.

[67] Reproductions were featured on a variety of products, including cigar bands, postcards, bottle openers, statuettes, watch fobs, and candy boxes;[7][67] the model was also popular as a tattoo.

In this successful version of September Morn, the subject bore a sheer cape, with leaves placed strategically over her body, and stood on a stage made-up as water.

[84][85] Meanwhile, September Mourning, a November 1915 release produced by L-KO, portrayed a pair of artists first vying for the attentions of a young woman in the park, then invading a school for girls.

September Morn was alluded to by a 1964 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, "October Eve", where a nude painting of one of the main characters is discovered for sale in an art gallery.

[95] Irene Deal, who dressed in a union suit and posed as "Miss September Morn" in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as a publicity stunt, was controversially fined $50[u] for disorderly conduct.

[70] Inspired by the commercial success of September Morn, displays of images of nude women became more common; a New York Times reader wrote in 1915 that they had become "increasingly vulgar and suggestive".

[100] In 1937 Life deemed September Morn "one of the most familiar paintings in the world",[101] and a retrospective Toledo Blade article characterized the model as having become America's number one pin-up girl.

[102] Carson wrote in 1961 that September Morn had caused "the most heated controversy over nudity, art, and morals" in the United States since Hiram Powers' statue The Greek Slave in the 1840s.

[104] By 1933 Chabas was seeking information regarding his work's fate, which The Milwaukee Journal suggested was "hanging in some crowded Russian room, its owner perhaps completely ignorant of its world fame".

[2] Speaking for the museum, Dudley T. Easby explained that, although the painting could not be classified as a masterpiece, it was nevertheless "a part of art history in view of the controversy that raged around the picture in earlier years".

[11] In 1971, the Met removed September Morn from display and placed it in storage; Walter Monfried of The Milwaukee Journal wrote that the once-racy painting was now considered "too tame and banal".

[113] In Le Temps, François Thiébault-Sisson found that, despite an "excessively translucent technique", the painting had "indisputable charm" and included "superior, very artistic, and delicately composed" imagery.

The director of the Met, James Rorimer, wrote in 1957 that September Morn stood at "different ends of a wide spectrum" than the works of Old Masters and "modern giants", but was important in helping viewers "realize the full benefit of our heritage" in their explorations of past and present art.

[80] Three years later, in an article in The Kenyon Review, Alfred Werner described September Morn as a "classic of kitsch" and "the 'idealized' nude at its worst": "without a wrinkle of the skin, without any breathing of the flesh ... pink, soft, spineless".

For instance, the historian Paul S. Boyer describes September Morn as "charmingly innocent",[120] and the art writer Elizabeth Lunday finds the painting to be "offensive only on the grounds of blandness".